In the 1660’s, if you were living in the Virginia of the time, you were living in a Parish instead of what we now call a County. Parishes were local units of both a community and the church. Remember back then everyone was required to go to church or suffer some punishment. The established church in Virginia at the time was the Church of England (Anglican). The Virginia General Assembly following basic English practice at the time legally designated Parishes with set boundaries. Some parishes continued to exist even after the Revolutionary War.
Just as an example, here are some of the Parishes existing in the late 1600s:
Brunswick, Cameron, Cople, Dettingen, Farnham, Hamilton, Hanover, Leeds, Lower, Lunenburg, Overwharton, Potomac, St. Mary’s, St. Paul’s, Shelburne, Sittingbourne, Truro, Upper, Washington
In 1661 and up until 1782 legislation was in place for Virginia requiring the churches in each parish to keep birth, christening, death and burial records for their parish. The religion or denomination did not matter and all people were to be accounted for.
Wouldn’t it be nice if all of those parishes complied and all of the records still existed? Unfortunately we do not know if all the parish churches complied and most of the records are gone. Still keep your eye open for these when researching your ancestors.
As for as births are concerned, the legislation, passed in 1661, specifically said that at least one parent of every freeborn child or one owner of every newborn slave had to report the birth to the parish minister within 20 days. There was to be a register at the church indicating these events with both parent’s names or the owner of the newborn slave. Christenings were to be recorded as well. The same type of legislation was in place for deaths and burials.
Other Parish records that are of value to genealogists are Procession records. Due to an overwhelming number of land boundary disputes in Colonial Virginia, the assembly made it mandatory that landowners Process their land every 4 years. This meant that their boundaries had to be agreed upon with their neighbors. Parish church authorities were put in charge of this procedure. In order to make it easier to organize the church split parishes into precincts. Performing the procession process would be two surveyors and other selected landowners together, living in the precinct. Procession records are a good place to find landowners and get an idea of who their neighbors were.
In Colonial Virginia the power of the parish church was about equal to the county courts. The church and the courts equally divided the responsibility of running a Parish, with the church being responsible for anything legally related to marriages, orphans, procession of land, religion or morality. Records naming your ancestors may survive in relation to these events. The parish church collected taxes to support itself and the minister as well as the poor. These tithable lists may survive. For at least the first half of the 1700’s church going was mandatory and if you didn’t attend you were fined and/or punished. Records may exist detailing these actions. Orphan records may exist also since the church had power over orphans even dictating where they would be apprenticed.
You can see the array of records that you may come across when searching for your ancestors in Colonial Virginia. Many do not survive but what does survive may help prove the existence of an ancestor or tell how they lived at the time.
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